Schlesinger

by Richard Aldous

  Arthur had provided the rationale he thought Kennedy needed for a Cuba policy that stopped short of invasion. Perhaps it was the excitement of his first public display of policy influence that caused Schlesinger to flunk his moment with the president about Cuba. When Kennedy asked him on April 4 after a meeting with staff whether the invasion should go ahead, in his own words of apology to the president, “I’m afraid that I did not give a properly ordered answer.” But returning to his desk, Schlesinger had written a five-page memorandum to the president that set out in a clearer fashion his views on the issue. To give the memo even greater clarity, he included an executive summary at the beginning that was free of the usual nuances of analysis. The latest plan for Cuba, he wrote, would represent “a change of phase in our Cuban policy.” If it worked, it would have “the highly beneficial result of getting rid of the Castro regime.” If that could be done “by a swift, surgical stroke, I would be for it.” “But in present circumstances,” Schlesinger went on, nailing his colors to the peace party mast, “I am against it.”19

  He then laid out a more detailed case against the operation. Hazards included that any protracted struggle would inevitably involve “the commitment of American prestige . . . [and] increasing pressure on us to guarantee the success of the operation.” It would give the Soviet Union the opportunity “to wage political warfare,” as Cuba “will become our Hungary [1956].” To allies, the operation will seem “gross, unprovoked and bullying imperialism.” There would be the embarrassment of evasions and even lies to the press. “Whatever we do,” Schlesinger continued, “the effect will be to spoil the new US image—the image of intelligence, reasonableness and honest firmness which has already had such an extraordinary effect in changing world opinion about the US and increasing world confidence in US methods and purposes.”20

  By the staff meeting of April 7, Schlesinger knew he had lost the debate. “We seem destined to go ahead,” he recorded. He met privately afterwards with Dick Goodwin, who also had reservations, about “making one more try” to reverse the decision; when they approached McGeorge Bundy, he shot down the notion. Still, Schlesinger persisted. Seeing Kennedy that afternoon, he raised the issue again, pointing out that political and diplomatic contingency planning remained woeful, a point the president accepted “with vigor.” Yet still, Schlesinger recorded, “It is apparent that he has made his decision and is not likely now to reverse it.”21

  Even now Schlesinger did not give up. Both he and Goodwin decided to see Dean Rusk, secretary of state, who was known to harbor some reservations about the operation. Rusk, clearly punting, said that he had “for some time” wanted to “write up a balance sheet on the project” and would now do so over the weekend in order to discuss it with the president the following week. Goodwin described how Rusk in his meeting “listened patiently to my monologue, then—I’ll never forget it—leaned back in his chair, pressed his fingertips together, hovered for a moment in this pose of thoughtful concentration, and then, slowly, pausing between each phrase: ‘You know, Dick, maybe we’ve been oversold on the fact that we can’t say no to this thing.’ ” It was, Goodwin noted, the moment he understood “the secret of Rusk’s extraordinary staying power—say little, and above all, go with the flow.”22

  Finally in desperation, Schlesinger sought out Bobby Kennedy, the president’s brother and closest advisor. It was a brutal experience. “So Arthur Schlesinger came to my house sometime that week,” Bobby recalled afterward to John Bartlow Martin. “I can remember having a conversation with him in which he said that he was opposed to it. I said that I thought everybody had made up their minds and that he was performing a disservice to bring it back to the President. I remember telling him that once the President had made up his mind—once it seemed to have gone so far—we should all make efforts to support him. And he [Schlesinger] should remain quiet.”23

  For Schlesinger that process of “remaining quiet” actually meant completing a number of disagreeable tasks. An immediate test involved Gilbert Harrison, the owner and editor of the influential New Republic magazine. Harrison sent him a draft copy of a piece to run in the next edition. It was, in Schlesinger’s words, “a careful and substantially accurate account of CIA activities in Miami.” Schlesinger felt overwhelmed by “a predictable moral struggle.” On the one hand, clearly the article represented “trouble” for the White House. Equally, there were questions of whether or not “one should intervene in such matters of editorial judgment.” In the end, Schlesinger resolved the dilemma, not altogether to his own satisfaction, by passing the article to Kennedy, who quickly told him to do everything possible to stop the story. “So I called Gil, who accepted the suggestion promptly and without questions,” Schlesinger noted, “a gentlemanly and patriotic act, which made me feel rather unhappy.”24

  Another matter that made Schlesinger unhappy was having to be less than completely frank with Adlai Stevenson, now the US ambassador to the United Nations. Schlesinger traveled to New York along with Tracey Barnes of the CIA to brief the ambassador on Saturday, April 8. In A Thousand Days, Schlesinger said that Kennedy had instructed him, “the integrity and credibility of Adlai Stevenson constitute one of our great national assets, [so] I don’t want anything to be done which might jeopardize that.” In fact, the next week would see Stevenson compromised in a way that exactly damaged his reputation—something for which Schlesinger was in large part responsible. “We told him about the exile group. We told him we were training them, supplying them weapons, I’m not sure we told him that there would be U.S. planes, but we told him there would be no U.S. combat troops,” Schlesinger recalled of the meeting with Stevenson. “But there was a failure of communication” about the full extent to which the planned invasion was a CIA operation.

  The ambassador’s reaction, as Schlesinger’s own had been, was immediately to oppose the attack. “Look I don’t like this,” he said. “If I were calling the shots, I wouldn’t do it. But this is Kennedy’s show.” The unpleasantries over, they all retired to the Century Club for lunch. “He is substantially a good soldier about it,” Schlesinger recorded in his journal afterwards, “and is prepared to try and make the best possible U.S. case.” A week later Stevenson would find not Schlesinger but McGeorge Bundy on his doorstep on behalf of the president. “I told him all about it,” Bundy later recalled. “We should have done that a week earlier.” As Francis Plimpton, Stevenson’s second in command at the UN, bitterly reflected of Schlesinger’s briefing, “Certainly there was great lack of candour in that interview.”25

  The invasion, launched on April 17, quickly developed into precisely the calamity that Schlesinger had feared. A combination of bad weather and poor planning meant that the Cuban émigrés struggled to get ashore, and when they finally did, Castro’s forces were waiting for them. The CIA asked Kennedy for permission to send in further American planes or even ground troops, but the president, still thinking he could hide US involvement, turned them down flat. Effectively the operation was over. “How could I have been so stupid as to let them go ahead?” Kennedy asked Ted Sorensen. Historians have asked the same question. Castro, capitalizing on nationalist sentiment, used the opportunity to announce his intention to make Cuba a Communist state. Privately he agreed to let the Soviets take a leading role in the Cuban security service and in external defense. “The Bay of Pigs had brought John Kennedy the worst possible outcome,” write Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali. “A coup-proof Cuba in a Caribbean even more unwilling to approve the use of outside force. He now faced a Communist state, a short flight away from Miami. The question that the world asked in the aftermath of this personal debacle was whether the United States could come to terms with a Soviet beachhead in its backyard. . . . The very nature of the rivalry between the superpowers rested on the answer to that question.”26

  If Schlesinger felt “unhappy” about misleading the “gentlemanly” Harrison and the “good soldier” Stevenson, his determination throughout to protect the presiden
t overrode all other concerns. In a nine-page memo for Kennedy a week before the invasion, copied to Rusk and to Bundy, Schlesinger had laid out his suggestions to overcome problems identified in his often repeated overall objection that “the operational planning for the Cuban project seems much farther advanced than the political, diplomatic and economic planning which properly should accompany it.” Central to Schlesinger’s argument was the good name both of the United States and the president himself. The United States “is emerging again as a great, mature and liberal nation, coolly and intelligently dedicated to the job of stopping Communism, strengthening free and neutral nations and working for peace, “ he wrote, echoing an earlier memo. “It is this reawakening world faith in America which is at stake in the Cuban operation.” Therefore a key element of the coming days was to guard that, including “protection of the President.”

  Curiously using the words that in A Thousand Days he would put in Kennedy’s mouth about Stevenson, he explained, “The character and repute of President Kennedy constitute one of our greatest national resources. Nothing should be done to jeopardise this invaluable asset.” Then Schlesinger went on to spell out how this protection might be accomplished in practical terms. “When lies must be told, they should be told by subordinate officials,” he urged. “At no point should the President be asked to lend himself to the covert operation. For this reason, there seems to me merit in Secretary Rusk’s suggestion that someone other than the President make the final decision and do so in his absence—someone whose head can later be placed on the block if things go terribly wrong.”27

  Those looking for a scapegoat have used these final words to bring down opprobrium and condemnation on Schlesinger. For example, historian and Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek writes that the phrase “someone whose head can later be placed on the block” was one that “may have ingratiated him with the president but does no credit to his historical reputation.” Moreover, Dallek judges more generally about Schlesinger and the invasion, “On balance, he favored continued quiet anti-Castro actions but opposed an invasion. Against his better judgment, however, he fell into line with Kennedy’s command. It is an example of a brilliant critic who sacrificed his independent judgment to the attractions of continuing access to power.”28

  But is it? Dallek is a reputable historian, but in this instance he seems naïve about how governmental decision-making actually takes place and strangely affronted both personally and on behalf of his profession. Surely it is an obvious point that Schlesinger was no longer a critic: as a special assistant to the president, he was a government official. An argument might be made that he never should have joined the administration in the first place, but it is absurd to say that once there he should, or even could, have held out on Cuba once the president had made up his mind. Resignation was always a final recourse. Otherwise, he served at the pleasure of the president. More broadly, as a member of an administration, he was bound by the usual conventions of collective responsibility. He came out hard against the operation, repeatedly making clear his opposition both to the president and to senior cabinet ministers such as Dean Rusk, to such an extent that Robert Kennedy, presumably on the instructions of his brother, had told him to desist. Thereafter, Schlesinger got on with his job of helping the president execute his policy, converting Schlesinger not into a supporter of the operation, but into someone trying to plug the holes that had led him to oppose it in the first place. That governments mislead the press, the public, allies, and even members of their own administration—disagreeable as it may often be—is hardly news, as Eisenhower’s U-2 escapade the previous year had demonstrated and countless operations thereafter would demonstrate, including the Grenada invasion, with President Reagan’s barefaced lie to his closest ally, the British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Schlesinger as a younger man, such as during his wartime experience at the Office of War Information, might have reacted petulantly and resigned in a huff. Instead he acted with a certain maturity in the middle of a crisis not of his own making, showing a willingness not to quit the arena to return to a spectator’s seat at the first sign of trouble. He lost the argument, so moved on. The pragmatic Schlesinger had trumped the principled one, calculating that he would live to fight another day for something else important.

  As a historian, later, Schlesinger reflected on some of the practical and ethical difficulties of this position. Certainly he laid out in successive memoranda to the president his opposition to the plan, and followed them up by “speaking truth to power” inside the Oval Office. However, he worried that while such actions “look nice on the record,” they actually represented “of course, the easy way out.” Schlesinger would reproach himself for not speaking out more vigorously in a series of meetings of principals and staff held in the Cabinet Room during which he contributed little, “although my feelings of guilt were tempered by the knowledge that a course of objection would have accomplished little save to gain me a name as nuisance.”

  Then in one of his most reflective passages in A Thousand Days, he made a forthright appraisal while staring into the looking glass at the historian in government standing before him. “It is one thing for a Special Assistant to talk frankly in private to a President at his request,” he writes, “and another for a college professor, fresh to government, to interpose his unassisted judgment in open meeting against that of such august figures as the Secretaries of State and Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, each speaking with the full weight of his institution behind him.” In part, the problem was rhetorical. Soldiers and spooks were always able to “strike virile poses and talk of tangible things—fire power, air strikes, landing craft and so on.” Diplomats and special advisors had only intangibles to invoke: “the moral position of the United States, the reputation of the President, the response of the United Nations, ‘world public opinion,’ and other such odious concepts.” The tendency for advisors and State Department officials to back the former over the latter was often overwhelming, driven by a desire to demonstrate “they were not soft-headed idealists but were really tough guys, too.”

  A few voices, such as that of William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stood against the prevailing wind when they were brought into the discussion. Fulbright provided an instructive contrast for Schlesinger’s own behavior during the crisis. Hitching a ride to Palm Beach on March 30, Fulbright had presented Kennedy with a memorandum opposing any military action. Kennedy then brought him in a few days later for the final review of the Cuban operation, during which Fulbright faced down the CIA and military top brass, saying the planned invasion was a constitutional and operational disaster. “Fulbright speaking in an emphatic and incredulous way denounced the whole idea,” Schlesinger recalled, judging his remarks “a brave, old-fashioned American speech, honorable, sensible and strong.” It was a lesson for him in how an advisor to the president might communicate opposition with clarity and force.29

  Fulbright aside, Schlesinger left most meetings “fearful that only two of the regulars present were against the operation: but since I thought the President was the other, I kept hoping that he would avail himself of his own escape clause and cancel the plan.” Once it became clear that the president had signed off, it was game over for Schlesinger’s objections. “We all succumbed,” wrote Dick Goodwin afterwards. “Even those who opposed the plan (except for Arthur Schlesinger) failed to challenge the imperative of a swift decision.”30

  Lying in bed in the early hours of April 19, turning events of recent days over in his mind, Schlesinger was shaken from his thoughts when the telephone rang. He had only just returned home to Georgetown, but now here was McGeorge Bundy on the line saying the president wanted to see him right away. Dressing quickly and driving to the White House, Schlesinger entered the Oval Office to find the president gathered with his senior team, including Vice President Johnson, secretaries Rusk and McNamara, and the army chief of staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer—all dressed incongruously in white tie an
d tails for a congressional reception that had been going on inside the building. Adolf Berle, Kennedy’s advisor on Latin American affairs, was going to Florida to placate the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the émigré group formed by the CIA nominally to coordinate and direct the invasion. (“I can think of happier missions,” Berle sardonically noted.) The president asked Schlesinger to go with him. Arthur dashed home to Georgetown to pack a bag before heading out to the airport. On board the Military Air Transport Service plane, he and Berle apprehensively discussed tactics over a “dreary” Service meal. In Miami they found the waiting Cuban Revolutionary Council despondent and angry. Calling Washington, the two men were told that matters had further deteriorated; even evacuation was now impossible. “How to break the news that the CIA had shattered their hopes and sent their sons to death or captivity?” Schlesinger pondered. “How to do so, and at the same time dissuade them from calling a press conference, telling all they knew and issuing public denunciations of the CIA and the Kennedy administration.” Turning to Berle, Schlesinger said, “Can’t we do something to bring the President into it?” Berle suggested taking the Council to Washington, DC, to meet the president. They phoned the White House, but Dean Rusk stalled. They waited a few minutes and then tried to get hold of the president personally. Kennedy told them to bring the Council to the White House, where a few hours later he “expressed his regret over the events of the last 48 hours.”31

  Schlesinger was struck by how “quiet but plain impressive” the president seemed. Others were less convinced. Jacqueline Kennedy later recalled how, after the congressional reception, her husband had “just put his head in his hands and sort of wept.” Sorensen around the same time found his boss “depressed and lonely.” Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, visiting the Oval Office after the congressional reception, was shocked to find an “extremely bitter” Kennedy “dishevelled” and talking “too fast.”